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Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

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Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#21

Post by austhrow743 »

There will be local businesses with fairly aggressive marketing. Tons of billboards, on buses, local newspaper, etc. Should be easy to find because they're the ones advertising everywhere.

Call them up one by one and say "hey I run [project] that everyone has been using lately, would you be interested in having your business name listed as a sponsor? It'll be shown on 1/4 page loads which is currently 5000 times a day. $500/month".

You'll know in like an hour if there's any advertising potential.

Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#22

Post by Ankaios »

austhrow743 wrote: post #21

There will be local businesses with fairly aggressive marketing. Tons of billboards, on buses, local newspaper, etc. Should be easy to find because they're the ones advertising everywhere. Call them up one by one and say "hey I run [project] that everyone has been using lately, would you be interested in having your business name listed as a sponsor? It'll be shown on 1/4 page loads which is currently 5000 times a da…

Or charge even more for product placement in your project's prompts.

Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#23

Post by schainks »

Ankaios wrote: post #22
austhrow743 wrote: post #21

There will be local businesses with fairly aggressive marketing. Tons of billboards, on buses, local newspaper, etc. Should be easy to find because they're the ones advertising everywhere. Call them up one by one and say "hey I run [project] that everyone has been using lately, would you be interested in having your business name listed as a sponsor? It'll be shown on 1/4 page loads which is currently 5000 times a da…

Or charge even more for product placement in your project's prompts.

I swear I've seen this somewhere...

Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#24

Post by Ankaios »

schainks wrote: post #23
Ankaios wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or charge even more for product placement in your project's prompts.

I swear I've seen this somewhere...

Yeah, I didn't read far enough down the page before commenting. I must have been distracted by my tasty Coca Cola.

Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#25

Post by kiernanmcgowan »

Congrats on having a side project that is popular enough to break the bank - it's stressful to be sure, but you're a cut above the rest.

> I've already optimised the prompt and reduced the number of tokens I'm sending

Lets assume you've found, or will find, all possible technical optimizations for your AI spend on ChatGPT.

You can:

* Ask for donations

* Accept a $50/day cost for X days as a market research budget to find a monetization plan

* Have some "first 5 questions are free, next are paid (or whatever)" to rate limit cost while maybe raising revenue

* Look for a common pattern of questions to see if there's some value / insight into your users that can be used as a source of revenue

* Find a cheaper LLM that supports your needs while being serviceable

* Pull the plug because its a joke, claim credit for it, and take the learnings onto the next thing

edit: grammar & formatting

Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#26

Post by stndef »

Is it GlasgowGPT by any chance?

Either way, there's definitely an opportunity for funding. In the case of Glasgow, there's a huge populous out there that are descendants of folk from the city/country taking pride in it (arguably more than a bunch of us that live here!) and like to get in on the banter.

That's certainly an avenue worth exploring if there's a similar relationship with folks or families of folks that emigrated away, but feel a strong connection.

Edit: You'll have to excuse my unfamiliarity with LLMs, but if you're storing messages and responses, and if there's a way to check that a message has already been asked, would it be possible to replay that (at least on the first message) instead of running a new query against the API? If they then engage further, then it would send the job out?

Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#27

Post by anonylizard »

furyofantares wrote: post #12

Contact local businesses and sell ads injected into your prompt

This.

Sell it as a 'Google ads back in 2002', frame it in terms of high risk high reward. Sure its unproven, but back in those days, a lucrative click may have only costed $1,$2. When search ads got fully proven, they started costing $100/$200.

Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#28

Post by [deleted] »

stndef wrote: post #26

Is it GlasgowGPT by any chance? Either way, there's definitely an opportunity for funding. In the case of Glasgow, there's a huge populous out there that are descendants of folk from the city/country taking pride in it (arguably more than a bunch of us that live here!) and like to get in on the banter. That's certainly an avenue worth exploring if there's a similar relationship with folks or families of folks that em…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

#30

Post by zuprau »

Ankaios wrote: post #24
schainks wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I swear I've seen this somewhere...

Yeah, I didn't read far enough down the page before commenting. I must have been distracted by my tasty Coca Cola.

Was it Coca Cola or Pepsi? The last time my family and I sat down for our usual blind test dinner everyone agreed Pepsi tasted better.
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